The Fall Fair for On-Campus Jobs was held Wednesday, Sept. 1 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union’s Bridge Lounge. 

Representatives from Housing and Dining and Intramural Sports at the job fair informed students about the available on-campus positions, providing them with the paperwork needed to apply for those positions. 

Cody Hollensbe, the Graduate Assistant for intramural sports, said that they are looking for applicants for the Intramural Sports Official position. 

As intramural sports officials, students “officiate all of the intramural sports that are here on campus.”

Students in this position would have to make sure games for the various intramural sports Eastern offers run smoothly. 

These sports include both team sports such as soccer, volleyball and dodgeball, as well as special events such as tennis, badminton and Esports. 

“They are the refs and they control the game,” Hollensbe said. “They make sure all the rules are followed. They make sure safety is followed as well.”

Aside from that, intramural sports officials also make sure to keep score during games. 

Chris Coffey, the Associate Director of Housing and Dining for Panther Dining, was also at the job fair, helping students learn more about the many job positions available in dining. 

Coffey said that they have many job positions available for students in Eastern’s dining halls, Java Beanery and Bakery and the University Food Court.

“It could range from doing dishes to running the cash register to serving on a serving line to working at Chick-fil-A,” Coffey said. “Just a variety of different positions that we have open right now.”

Due to COVID-19 affecting how things were run in housing and dining last year, The Housing and Dining department has many vacancies they are trying to fill this school year. 

Last school year, dining halls primarily served food to go, so transitioning back to in-person dining has been a challenge. 

“If everything’s to go, then we don’t need pot and pan people to wash the plates and all that kind of stuff. If it’s in person, like we have this year, we’ve added those pot and pan shifts back in because we do have the regular plating again now.”

That combined with having had several people leave their job positions over the last year opened up more vacancies for new student workers. 

Hollensbe said that they have faced similar problems in Intramural Sports. 

Before COVID-19 hit, they had more sports to offer, which made it easier for students to have opportunities to officiate sports, but things were different last school year. 

“We weren’t able to do too many team sports last year, but we were able to do the special events and stuff like this still ran,” Hollensbe said. “We didn’t have quite as many but we still had them. We still had quite a few participants in them.”

Despite the problems they have had in the past in recruiting students, Hollensbe was happy to see so many students interested in job positions this year.

“We had quite a few applicants. I was very pleased that we had as many as we did stop and talk with us,” Hollensbe said. 

Coffey felt the same way, saying that the turnout was pretty good this year, which he credits to the changes they made to how the job fair is run since the last time Eastern had one.

“We weren’t able to do a job fair last year because of COVID,” Coffey said. “The previous year we did do a job fair in the library, and we did not have the very good turnout that we had today. It was more geared to if you are already interested in a job that you’ve applied for, let’s get you in here to do all the paperwork. This job fair is more to get the information out there. Let’s show you what we have in Housing and Dining that you could work for and see what we need to do and the best benefit to the dining operation as well as the students.”

Kyara Morales-Rodriguez can be reached at 581-2812 or at knmoralesrodriguez@eiu.edu.